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‘I don’t like having to do this, Susie, any more than you like standing there watching me. But this house is going to have to be disposed of, and the sooner I find the will the better. Someone must be named as executor. And it can’t be left through the winter with pipes freezing up and everything. There’ll be bills to sort out too: the gas, the electricity … it can’t all just be left.’
She looked up from a pile of old newspapers that had come to light. They went way back – one of them even mentioned food rationing. ‘But what makes you think Uncle Bert left the house to you?’ she asked.
‘I didn’t say that’s what I thought, did I?’
‘No. But … you do think so, don’t you?’
Frank grunted as he dragged a shoe box from under the bed. ‘Who else do you think he could have left it to? You? Since you were such great penpals?’
Susannah gritted her teeth at the little jibe. Dad would be out of her hair in an hour or so. Just put up with him for a bit longer, she told herself, and you needn’t see him again for – oh, ages.
‘Of course he won’t have left it to me,’ she said. ‘But I wouldn’t go building your hopes if I were you. It can’t be worth much, can it? Haringey isn’t exactly the up and coming area of London, you know. Anyway –’ she moved to peer over his shoulder as he blew grey dust off the lid of the box – ‘you’ve got loads of money, Dad. I don’t know what you’re getting worked up about.’
‘Why do children always assume that their parents are made of money? And I’m not getting worked up. If anyone’s getting worked up it’s you two hysterical women. Anyone would have thought I was trying to rob Bert’s grave.’
‘He hasn’t got a grave; he was cremated. And it’s not us making a fuss,’ she insisted, ‘it’s you.’
‘What’s got into you all of a sudden?’ Frank growled as the lid flew off. It wasn’t like Susannah to stand up to him like this.
‘Nothing. Nothing.’ Did everyone think she was behaving oddly? ‘Well, it looks like you’ve turned up trumps. That’s a will if ever I saw one.’
Frank didn’t need to be told. He’d already smoothed out the folds. ‘Christ!’ he muttered.
‘What? Tell me.’
He thrust the document towards her.
‘Who the hell’s this Dora Saxby?’ she said when she’d studied the interesting part. She could scarcely keep amusement from her voice: her father hadn’t benefited at all.
‘A woman he used to see.’ Frank’s watery pink eyes looked bleakly into the distant past. He put a finger in his ear, as he often did when upset about something, and absently raked it around. ‘I thought he’d given her up. She was married, you see. Perhaps he didn’t give her up after all. I lost track.’
‘A woman? I never knew.’ Susannah grinned. It was the best news she’d had all day. At least her Uncle Bert had lived a little. An image came to her mind. ‘There was an old dear at the back of the chapel today. I thought she’d got left behind by mistake. But I suppose it could have been her.’ She looked down at the will again and couldn’t resist rubbing salt into her father’s wound. ‘Did you see I’m to have five hundred pounds and the card table? Perhaps I’ll spend the money on air tickets for the family so we can all fly out to see you and Jan in your lovely romantic farmhouse. You must have finished all the renovations by now, surely? When would you like us to come?’
But they both knew she was only bluffing; Susannah would not voluntarily spend any amount of time in Jan’s company. Jan – a teacher at the same school as her father – had never been forgiven for befriending him and eventually taking her mother’s place. Even though her mother had been dead for several years by the time Frank and Jan married and Susannah then eighteen, she hadn’t been able to understand how her father could be so disloyal as to go after another woman. She still couldn’t.
The phone rang and rang in the empty cottage. Simon put down his receiver in disgust. Where had his mother got to? She hadn’t been at work – the guy who’d picked up the phone there had no idea where she was – and she wasn’t at home. But he badly needed her advice. He had no idea what he was going to do.
Reluctant to leave the comparative warmth of the phone booth, even though it smelled disgustingly of urine, he slumped against the Perspex wall. But his eyes fell on the baby buggy outside and he knew he ought to get moving. He would in a minute, he promised himself; right now he felt safe from the world.
Justin would be OK out there for a while. He was protected from the cutting wind by his plastic bubble and was fast asleep with three fingers in his mouth, blissfully unaware of his mother’s defection.
Simon made a fist and thumped the side of the booth. How could Natalie do this to her own child? How could she do it to him? Spurred by anger, he rolled out of the kiosk, grabbed the buggy, and set off down the street, hunched in his anorak and hoping no one would recognise him.
‘You aren’t normal!’ he’d flung at Natalie two days previously as she’d struggled out of their flat with a suitcase in one hand and a typewriter in the other.
‘Not all women are born mothers,’ she’d growled back. ‘I didn’t want him. And it was your fault we had him in the first place. So you can jolly well look after him.’
She humped her things down the stairs.
‘Oh, don’t keep dragging all that up!’ he groaned. ‘It wasn’t my fault the wretched thing burst.’
‘They test them to destruction, you know. Blow them up on machines. You just handled it wrongly.’
‘Well, there’s no point going over it again. It happened and we have to live with it. You should be thinking of Justin, not your stupid career.’
Simon couldn’t understand it. Justin was so cute and smart and lovable; a great kid. Nobody could not like him. How could his own mother be so set against him?
He had glared into the car that came to pick Natalie up. That friend of hers – Lara – had something to do with it, he was sure; she’d been putting all sorts of ideas into Natalie’s head, bit by bit. Feminist ideas. Ideas about independence and dedicating oneself to one’s career.
Of course, Simon acknowledged, jerking the buggy up a high kerb, feminism was nothing new to Natalie – she’d been brought up on it, after all – but she hadn’t pursued it so avidly before. Not until Lara had come on the scene. And everything had gone downhill from then on.
Losing his job had been the last straw.
‘Well, at least you can look after the baby now,’ Natalie had told him when he’d come home and broken the news. That was all the sympathy he’d got. ‘It’ll save me having to keep ferrying him around all the child-minders. And it’ll save the expense.’
‘But – but what are we going to live on? Your salary’s hardly enough.’ Teachers were notoriously poorly paid, and Natalie was at the bottom of the scale.
But she seemed to have worked things out already – as though she had been planning it all for months.
‘I –’ she cast him a wary glance before looking away again – ‘I think I’ll move in with Lara for a while. That should work out a lot cheaper.’
Simon blinked. And blinked again. ‘But what about me and Justin? There won’t be room for us – and I wouldn’t want to live with Lara if you paid me. We can’t go on living here either, with nothing coming in.’ He shook his head as though he had an insect in his ear. ‘Nat, none of this makes sense.’
‘Oh …’ She flapped him aside with one hand. ‘Go and move in with your parents. They’ll be delighted to have you, I’m sure.’
Had there been sarcasm in her tone? Simon reached the door of the flat that he must vacate at the end of the week. What had she been suggesting? That they wouldn’t welcome him with open arms? Well, they would; and they would love to see more of their grandchild.
Not that he could contemplate such a thing, of course. How would that make him look? A grown man, with responsibilities, running home to Mummy?
Not if he could help it.
‘Grief!’ Harvey muttered to himself when he finally got out of bed. His sleep-swollen eyes fell on the debris on Julia’s dressing table and followed a trail of jumble to the bathroom. He hadn’t noticed how untidy Julia was all the years he had been out working. Or if he had noticed it hadn’t bothered him. It was only now, stuck with it for most of the day, day after day, that it was really beginning to get to him.
Heaving himself from the bed he picked up a pair of red panties, two flimsy blouses, and a heap of wet towels. He dropped the clothes in a white wicker Ali Baba and hung the towels on a heated rail. He cleaned out the shower, tidied up the line of toiletries that ran almost the entire length of the bath tub, and then made the bed.
And he didn’t stop there. Fired by – well – he wasn’t sure what had brought on this aberration, he went on to clean the whole house. And when it was all in order and fit to be photographed for Homes and Gardens, he had a late lunch sandwich and a long, hot shower. Then he sat down at the piano in the lounge.
Mozart, he thought, his hands stiff and uncooperative; that’s what I need. Something to make me feel human again.
But he discovered that what he could hear in his head could no longer be reproduced by his fingers. Not surprising, since he hadn’t played for years. It didn’t matter though; there was no one around to listen. So he went on playing, stumbling over the cold keys and repeating his many mistakes, his thoughts drifting about with the music.
Was this real life, he asked himself: cleaning the house and strumming out tunes? Was this what soldiers dreamed of in the trenches when they were miles away at war? Did they really yearn only for their homes, for their loved ones safely about them, and all this crashing, unmitigated ordinariness? And when they were safe and sound at home did they yearn for excitement again, wishing they were back in the thick of it?
Harvey dropped the lid with a jangle and covered his eyes with his hands. Being out in the thick of things didn’t seem to be the answer either: caught up in the world of business, making money, dashing about in pursuit of an absorbing career. No. All that really gave you was an excuse for not addressing the big, burning question; you could simply tell yourself you hadn’t the time to think about it.
But now he had all the time in the world. The question stood before him, and nothing would make it go away. The ultimate riddle – a riddle he couldn’t begin to discuss with his nearest and dearest because she wouldn’t have the remotest idea what he was on about – was beginning to drive him crazy: what the hell was this life all about?
But a loud thundering at the front door prevented him having to come up with an answer just then.
‘Yes?’ he demanded, his eyes sweeping the small band of workmen he found propping up the porch.
‘Mr Webb? We’ve come early,’ their spokesman told him with a grin. ‘Now’s not often that happens, is it? We saw yer car on the drive, so we knew someone must be in, and we thought – well, you ain’t likely to object, are yer, mate?’
‘Object? To what?’ But Harvey had spotted a blue van with writing on the side and it began to trigger his memory.
‘Object to us getting on with it,’ the ring-leader said. ‘Make a start, kind of thing. Get the gear into the house and have another look-see. Know what I mean? Then tomorrow we can get down to things bright ’n early.’
‘Oh.’ Harvey’s face fell. ‘The bathroom. Of course.’
Some time ago Julia had decided they must have the guest bathroom refitted, and he had absently agreed. At the time, when quotations and so forth had been bandied about, he hadn’t taken much notice except for the final cost. He had nodded at colour charts and samples and hadn’t thought he would be much affected by the actual work; he’d certainly never dreamed he’d be part of the surroundings when it happened. Now he realised his privacy was about to be invaded, when all he wanted was to be left alone with his misery and the great mystery of life.
‘I suppose you’d better come in,’ he said, holding the door a little wider, and he watched in dismay as the work-party shambled past him in paint-splattered boots. Within minutes every room in the house seemed to be cluttered with copper piping, a shiny new bathroom suite stuck all over with impossible tape, ladders in three different sizes – what would they need those for? – and a stack of filthy tools. All Harvey’s work of the past four hours had gone to a ball of chalk.
But the boxes of tiles Julia had selected for the walls were too much to stomach.
‘Oh no,’ he said, taking one between his fingers as though it stank, ‘definitely, absolutely, and most decidedly not. This lot can go straight back where they came from.’
And then he had an idea.
CHAPTER 6 (#ulink_71bec7eb-cac5-52ba-84c6-d6eaf9c1fd09)
The green hold-all with tan leather trim bumped against Frank’s thigh as he walked towards the boarding gate. It bulged so much with goodies for Jan and himself that it made him tilt as though drunk. His arm muscles were strained and he was panting heavily. He was getting too old for globe-trotting, he decided. But at least this was the only luggage he had to worry about. He wouldn’t have to hang about the airport waiting for suitcases to be disgorged; he could get straight off home to Jan.
Lord, what a wasted trip! And how was he going to break the news? It was the last thing Jan would be expecting to hear from him. They had both been so sure of Bert’s money. For five short days they had blissfully assumed that all their problems were over. And now they were back to square one. Back to the nightmare that had begun almost as soon as they had left England and was still going strong.
Frank sighed as the crowd slowed to a crawl. No amount of goodies would ease the pain for his wife. Poor Jan. She had always been such a help to him – even before Rose died. A kind-hearted colleague whom he’d respected and grown to love. She didn’t deserve all this.
He handed over his boarding pass, tender warmth flooding his hard old heart. Dear Jan. What would he have done without her?
Simon sat in his car, staring up at the converted house. On the outskirts of Bristol and less than a mile from the one he and Natalie had lived in, it looked almost identical: Edwardian, three floors under a grey slate roof; run-down and generally uncared for.
He bounded up the path.
‘I told you not to come here,’ were Natalie’s first words. She looked furtively over her shoulder and Simon was well aware of Lara hovering in the background. But he wasn’t going to be deflected.
‘I’ve gone to a lot of trouble finding someone to keep an eye on Justin –’
‘You really shouldn’t have bothered.’
‘The least you can do is listen to me. Come outside for a walk.’ He began to pull her across the threshold and she frowned under her straight blonde fringe. Clearly Simon was determined; there was little point in arguing. ‘My shoes –’ She stumbled into them and let him lead her outside, but in the street she rounded on him.
‘You know this is utterly pointless.’
‘No it isn’t. Listen to me. First of all, you can’t just walk out on me like this. It isn’t fair. I can’t help it if I’ve been laid off.’ Let go was how it had been put to him. As if they were doing him a favour!
‘I haven’t walked out on you, Simon. Not permanently, anyway.’
‘What? Well, what’s this all about then? I really don’t understand. We should be facing our problems together, not split up like this.’
‘We need some time on our own. Some space to think things through. Face it, Simon. Things hadn’t been going right, had they? Not since …’ She looked down the street. Words seemed to have become too painful for her. It was as if she couldn’t bear to talk about Justin and the way his coming into their lives had changed things. Unlike Simon she had never been able to accept the unplanned pregnancy, and when Justin finally arrived had regarded the bundle in her arms as one might an unexploded bomb. Nurses had attributed her fits of weeping to the baby blues, but although they had subsided, little else had improved since then.
Natalie turned to Simon, biting her lip, her anorak flaring in the wind behind her. ‘You can claim benefits, you know. And you could get a room somewhere. Oh, you’ve got a brain in your head, haven’t you? I’m sure you’ll manage all right.’
Simon snorted in incredulity. That she could wash her hands of him he could maybe come to terms with, but to be parted willingly from her child … well, it still boggled the mind.
‘Oh, Natalie …’ He groaned. He stepped towards her, his eyes moist, his hands slipping inside her coat.
‘No, Simon.’ Her voice was cold. ‘Don’t. And don’t come to Lara’s flat again. She’s not happy about it. Phone me at work if you must, and we’ll meet up, somewhere, sometime. You can bring Justin with you, if you like,’ she added grudgingly, and with that she ducked into a path that led to the back of the house and disappeared from view.
Simon was left on the pavement with a heavy heart – and a fearful one. Bring Justin with you if you like? And Lara isn’t happy? This Lara obviously meant more to Natalie than anyone else did. He spent the rest of the evening wondering why.
‘Got rid of him already?’ Lara smiled approvingly. ‘It didn’t take you long.’
‘Yes.’ Natalie’s smile was less strong. Pleasing Lara brought a glow of pleasure … but it was hardly enough to banish her doubts. She wasn’t sure about the course she was taking, in spite of her bravado in front of Simon. Was she really a wicked mother? Or was Lara right about leaving Justin with Si? It didn’t seem right to have to support a man, but … oh, she didn’t know. She was tired of thinking about it all. So horribly, desperately tired. And it made life that much easier, falling in with Lara.
But heaven knew what Simon’s parents would think of her when they found out what was going on. They would certainly not approve, neither would they understand. Hell. She really didn’t want to fall in their estimation – any more, that is, than her inept handling of Justin must have lowered her already. Oh, she’d noticed how Susannah looked at her, as if she was doing everything wrong. Not that she said anything of course – never interfered. She could just feel it.
Really, the Hardings were much better parents than her own; she quite liked them. They had been good to her and Simon, giving them money and helping out. She wouldn’t want them upset.
Oh, but she really couldn’t think about them either. She had too much else to consider. And all she wanted to do, really, was sleep.
Susannah’s saw made comforting phwitt-phwitt, phwitt-phwitt noises as she cut up lengths of wood in her work room – or studio as she had recently begun to refer to it. It was dark outside at the moment but, during the day, light slanted through a sky-light as well as from a window at one end of the room overlooking the garden, making it not only a practical place in which to work but a pleasant one. In the centre was a large wooden table with a pair of stools pushed under it, and beneath the window was a work bench and a deep square sink. Her materials were neatly ranged on shelves.
Not for her the chaotic methods of the stereotypical artist; Susannah had to have everything in perfect order before she could create – and that included the whole cottage. If a bed was unmade or a cup unwashed it had to be dealt with first.
Susannah loved the room, her pleasure in it only slightly marred by a sense of guilt. Paul had wanted to convert this single-storey extension, which the previous owners had used as a play room, into a dining room and she had had to battle it out with him.
‘Where will we entertain?’ he’d argued, looking round at what space was available and finding it seriously lacking. Cottages were all very well, he had begun to realise, but unless you could afford three knocked into one they were a bit claustrophobic.
‘Oh, there’s enough room for a table in the alcove in the lounge,’ Susannah had pointed out with a wave of one hand. She had no patience for serving up elaborate meals, and dinner parties bored her rigid.
‘Hardly ideal.’ Paul wrinkled his beakish nose at the idea. He’d recognised, though, the determination in his wife’s eye and had eventually decided to back down.
Now, coming in from a meeting that he’d told her – over the phone when she got back from the funeral – that he wished he’d chaired himself because then it would have taken up only half the time, his face registered that same frowning displeasure.
‘You’re early,’ Susannah said, removing a length of moulded wood from the Workmate and barely glancing up at him.
‘It’s gone seven o’clock.’ He stood impatiently watching her, his briefcase still at his side.
‘Your dinner’s in the microwave,’ she went on. ‘I’ve eaten mine already.’
‘Oh.’ His shoulders drooped as he nodded his head in unwilling acceptance of the fact, but he hung about for a bit longer, shifting from one foot to the other as though hoping circumstances might change: Susannah might drop what she was doing and decide she should head for the kitchen. She might mix him a gin and tonic, or give him a welcome-home kiss. She might stand on her head and do cartwheels … He went upstairs to get changed.
And returned less than ten minutes later wearing a polo shirt and sweater that set Susannah’s teeth on edge; Paul had about as much colour sense as a cat.
By now he was carrying his dinner plate in a cloth with one hand and a glass, knife and fork in the other. He arranged them neatly on a corner of the table before hooking one of the stools with his ankle and parking himself on top of it.
‘You don’t have to eat in here,’ Susannah told him with a little laugh. But the words had a chilly rasp to them.
